And for show, obviously.
“Gilles wasn’t here, I noticed,” the taller of the two women said to her friend.
The other one snickered. “Oh, I think Allegra can count her marriage over before it even began, Lydia.”
Before the women said anything else, they were already gone. Drifting down the aisle, their voices turning to whispers as they neared other people who might hear their unsavory conversation. Not a soul had dared to say one word about the fact that the senator had not shown up for his fiancée’s father’s funeral.
Statements were being made.
Apparently.
Penny no longer cared about the business or life of Allegra’s fake fiancé. Everything about the senator suggested the man had simply gotten tangled up in a web of lies—nothing more, and nothing less. He certainly wasn’t attached to The Elite or their business beyond his connection to her mother, and that had quickly fallen apart. She was sure the man had gone through a whole education about who exactly Allegra Dunsworth really was over the past few weeks.
She hoped his daughters were safe, now.
But that was all.
All that remained in the church besides the dying flowers on the altar and the scent of incense lingering in the air was Penny and the nuns starting to clean up at the front. There had been a large crowd at the funeral, but she expected that. She wondered if that was purposeful on the part of Allegra—another way to keep herself safe in the mess that she had created—or was it just the influence of a horrible man.
Hell, even tyrants were adored.
Why wouldn’t a monster be loved, too?
At the far end of the church, she heard a man tell one of the women, “Well, we better hurry if we’re going to see them carry him into the crypt.”
Yes.
Penny had to hurry now, too. She had a long-overdue meeting with a woman, and Allegra always did hate to wait.
“I’LL MISS YOU, DADDY.”
How sweet ...
Those were the first words that Penny had heard her mother speak over the course of the day—from a safe distance, of course—that she believed were true. Probably because Allegra was finally alone for the first time since arriving at the funeral in the back of a blacked-out town car with black sunglasses and a matching hat to keep anyone from seeing just how many layers of makeup she had caked on her face.
Was it getting hard to sleep?
Did dreams keep her awake?
Were they nightmares?
Penny wanted to ask as she rounded the final corner from the left-wing of the crypt that would meet the right—it was there that Charles’ golden casket had been left alongside his wife’s, parents’, and siblings’ graves. Instead, she said nothing as she moved like a ghost around the corner to find Allegra moving just a step away from the casket where it sat on a marble pedestal.
She made no sound.
There was no warning.
Like all of her kills before Allegra—each one that led up to her—the white ghost swept in with the same grace, danger, and beauty that had accompanied every murder she had ever made. She had never planned to treat her mother with any less respect—and lack of empathy—that she had for any other pedophile that met their end by her hand.
Because the woman wasn’t different.
Pain was pain, and God above knew that Allegra hadn’t been anything to Penny for a long time ... not a mother; nothing but a living, breathing scar she felt forced to wear. Another reminder of a shameful, dirty secret that had left her believing she was broken and unwanted for more than half her life.
Not worthy.
Not good enough.
Used.
There should have been more satisfaction inside Penny’s thundering heart when Allegra turned back slightly—just enough to catch sight of her daughter raising the nine-millimeter with the long end of the silencer pointed directly at her face.
Instead, what she felt was fear.
It clawed through her chest and lungs like a hungry, angry bear woken from its cave before the spring. All of her muscles locked, tensing into hard balls; boils ready to spring, and even her breath caught in her throat with a painful slice right down her windpipe.
The fear was still real.
Still violent.
It was also fleeting; a blip in the raging war of what was Penny’s mind whenever she stared into the eyes of the woman who had both birthed her and took away her will to live. All because she could—because Penny was hers.
Allegra’s piercing, cold stare widened when Penny told her mother, “I thought you might like to die with the only person you ever loved—so die with him.”
Allegra didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
Not when Penny didn’t give her the chance. Those painted-red lips of her mother’s opened with words that she would never get to say. And what was more beautiful was the fact that Penny didn’t wonder what those words might have been when the bullet from her gun plugged into Allegra’s forehead.
Two seconds later, her mother’s body hit the floor. It was the only noise left in the crypt, the dull thud carrying down the massive corridors, around the corner to where she knew people were waiting fifty feet away for Allegra to come back out.
But there were two wings.
Two ways in.
Not that Penny had time to absorb the impact of her finally ending what had been started far too many years ago. She had to leave—the white ghost left in much the same way that she came—but she did take the chance to glance back as the skirt of her black dress whipped wildly around her legs when she turned back for the left-wing.
Allegra’s dead stare and the blood pooling down between her eyes, ruining the canvas of heavy makeup, stared back.
“Goodbye, Allegra,” she whispered.
She’d done it.
Faced her demon.
Slayed the monster.
It should be over.
Penny should have been happy.
Angry.
Anything.
Right then, she was ... nothing.
Empty.
Alone.
PENNY WAS GRATEFUL for the cobblestone walkway that led up the final hill at the far end of the cemetery. It led to the same entrance she had used that connected to the side of the church. A quick way to the crypt, but not one that the hearse could drive while the hundreds of people followed behind.
Heels and grass were never friends, but at least the cobblestone made things slightly easier for Penny at the end of her trek out of the cemetery. With a little more conscious effort, that was, because nothing about cobblestone and heels were friends, either.
She blamed her distraction with moving fast—but also staying upright—for why she didn’t see the figure waiting on the other side of the hill when she came up over it. Hollers for help had already started to echo for Allegra when Penny first exited the left wing. A siren wailed in the distance—was it for the dead woman who couldn’t be saved?
“Was it like I promised it would be?” he asked.
Penny came to a standstill on the pathway, her skirt billowing from the wind as her head snapped up. She didn’t even react to snatch the hat that blew off her head in the wind that had picked up a lot more since she first arrived at the church that morning.
Cree waited for an answer. A gun rested in his right hand.
Penny rocked against the wind, her slight sway the only thing that moved between her and Cree for more seconds than she cared to count. The scent of ammonia from the boxed, black hair dye that she had ruined her white-blonde locks with the night before danced over her face when strands of her hair whipped against her skin.